Prodigal
by sing-oldsongs
Summary: Even after Sherlock cuts his ties to the rest of his family, he still allows Mycroft to visit him. Mycroft knows very well that this is only because he has something Sherlock needs. Pre-series.


**A/N**: Written for the Sherlock BBC kink meme on livejournal, for the prompt: "Mycroft is Sherlock's dealer because it's the only way he can be certain that Sherlock what [will] listen to him." My first venture into writing Sherlock fic.

**x**

His mother always serves him tea with two sugars, even though he stopped taking sugar in his tea at university, and she knows this. "Here you go," she says, with a smile that brings out all the small lines around her eyes she'd try to hide if she were spending the afternoon with anyone but him, and sets the cup next to him on the side table. She sits down in the chair next to the sofa. She's had that chair for as long as he can remember. His brother used to love that chair, said he did his best thinking in it.

"And how is your work?" his mother asks him, still with that forced fake smile on her face. He tells her to put it away.

"I know what you really want to ask, Mother," he says. "So you should ask it."

She makes some sort of comment about him and his _deductions_, as if it were a joke, but he doesn't laugh. Anyone, even the least observant, would be able to see that her conversation is forced, her mind elsewhere. Suddenly, she won't look at him. Her voice is very quiet when she asks, "Have you seen him recently?"

"Two days ago. I visited his flat." He speaks like it's business. _So…unemotional, my boys_, his mother used to say, unsure if she was complimenting them or not. His brother would say that she was.

"And?"

"And he is the same."

"Not eating any better?"

"No."

"Still too thin?"

"Yes."

"And too pale?"

"Yes."

"Dressing any better?"

"No."

"Has he found anyone yet?"

Found anyone. As if anyone would have him in this state. That is the first thing he thinks, although, he must admit that his brother has never had any trouble attracting attention, even at his worst. He just has trouble recognizing that attention or, perhaps, caring. This is why he is always single, despite their mother's most fervent hopes that the right girl will appear one day and help him clean himself up. This is why, Mycroft is almost sure, Sherlock is still a virgin, even though he is almost twenty eight years old.

**x**

He always calls Sherlock before he shows up at his flat, even though he doesn't have to. He knows exactly when Sherlock is in and when he is not, and Sherlock never answers his phone. Still, they have their ritual. Mycroft calls, Sherlock doesn't answer, Mycroft lets the phone ring anyway, and then, two minutes after the phone goes to voicemail—a curt message in a low, bored sounding voice telling the person calling that Sherlock will get back to him, if he feels like it—Mycroft's phone will sound once, the two beat high-low ring that tells him he has a text message.

_Come up._

So he does, and sometimes he finds Sherlock splayed across his bed in the corner, and other times he is in his kitchen, drinking tea, and sometimes he is sitting cross legged on his floor surrounded by papers or with his laptop open in front of him. Every now and then Mycroft finds him with bloodshot eyes, a pinched look about his face that says he hasn't eaten in days. It's never a surprise. If Sherlock's been using, he waits an extra minute to send his text.

Today he's sitting at his kitchen table, surrounded by empty teacups, and an unsolved Rubik's cube in his hands. He's twisting it slowly, over and over, and he barely glances up from it when Mycroft comes in.

"Having some difficulty?"

Sherlock's eyes snap up. They're clear, his face wan and colorless and thin, his expression hard as it always is now when he looks at Mycroft. It has not always been like this. "I've solved it two dozen times today," he corrects. "It is quite simple when you know the trick."

"Ah," Mycroft answers. "I stand corrected."

Sherlock laughs, one short ha of a sound, an unattractive snort. "For once," he says lowly, and then turns back to the cube. He is not moving the pieces into place, only turning the whole structure of it around in his hand, as if it had some clue, something hidden about it just beyond his sight. Mycroft doesn't ask. Maybe there's something there and maybe there isn't. It doesn't matter.

"I'd offer you tea," Sherlock says after a moment—he doesn't look up, and Mycroft still hasn't sat down—"but I don't have any clean cups."

Mycroft takes a quick count of the empty teacups on the table. He's surprised Sherlock even has this many. He rarely has any money and when he does come into some, he spends it on gadgets. He must have stolen these from Mother's house. She'd hardly miss them.

"And why—?" he starts.

"Experiment."

He does not press the point farther.

"You bring it?" Sherlock asks, then.

Mycroft is surprised it's taken him this long to ask. It isn't even a question, not really; just a request with a question mark at the end.

"Patience, little brother," he answers sweetly, and smiles at the way that Sherlock's eyes flick up and he scowls at him, just like the petulant child he used to be, and still so often resembles.

He turns his gaze down again. "Name your price."

"Eat."

Sherlock scoffs, so quick that Mycroft is sure it was an instinct he couldn't control. He should know better. He puts the Rubik's cube down on the table, but he doesn't let go of it, and he doesn't look up. "I eat. When I need to."

"_Sherlock_."

Their father died when they were young. This is the voice that Sherlock used to call Mycroft's trying-to-be-daddy voice, and he pairs it with a certain look, head downtilted and eyes narrowed and arms crossed against his chest, that Sherlock's always hated almost as much as he hates the voice. It gets to him now, too. He's trying not to let it show, but it does. His fingers tap against the side of the cube. "Mycroft," he says, in a sorry imitation of the tone.

"Do it for mummy."

"Oh please."

Mycroft pulls back the second kitchen chair with a loud scrape and sits down. "Price just went up."

Sherlock rolls his eyes, but Mycroft sees how his fingers curl against the edges of the Rubik's cube, like he's trying not to grab it and break it into pieces. He's mad at himself. He hates when he's not in control and Mycroft will always be in control of this, as long as Sherlock needs and his brother can provide. What will it be this time, he's wondering. They used to argue about Sherlock's clothes, his thin, worn t-shirts, the holes in his jeans, his ratty trainers and his scuffed up black boots, mud-splattered and dull. His hair is too long, too, always disheveled and getting into his eyes.

But Mycroft doesn't waste his time on these little battles anymore.

"No more than two packs a week," he says, instead, and watches as Sherlock turns up his eyes to give another of his disdainful stares.

"Is that the habit of mine that worries you most, Mycroft?" he asks.

"No." But it's one that he can control, and that is enough.

Sherlock doesn't press. "What else?"

Mycroft smiles thinly, because of course he wasn't done, and Sherlock knows well enough by now that he will make more requests before he gives anything away.

"Spend more time outside of your flat. At least once a day, Sherlock—fresh air is good for you, you know."

Sherlock rolls his eyes, but gives no other comment. He's being surprisingly agreeable today, and Mycroft considers pushing his luck. He puts his hand into his pocket, and doesn't fail to notice the way Sherlock's eyes catch the movement, the alert and hungry look that comes over his features as he watches Mycroft's hand, waiting for it reappear. "One more thing," Mycroft says. Sherlock doesn't answer, doesn't move. He's heard, there's no question, but Mycroft waits for him to acknowledge the words, to look up and meet his brother's gaze again. Sherlock takes his hands from his Rubik's cube, and gently pushes it away from him with one light movement of his long fingers. Then he puts his hands on his lap. He sits up straighter, and slowly, as if it were an effort, he brings his gaze up to Mycroft's again.

"What else?" he asks.

"Call mother."

Mycroft expects Sherlock to roll his eyes, to groan, to argue, but he's silent. He stares with his cold, gray eyes, and he waits, as if there were more, some punch line to this joke. He doesn't glance at all at Mycroft's hand, which is still in his pocket, moving, visibly moving, against the bag he keeps there. Sherlock hasn't spoken to their mother since he dropped out of university and moved out of her house. She gave up calling him after three months. Mycroft, however, was much more persistent.

He has never told her why Sherlock will talk to him, when he has so completely cut himself off from everyone else.

"Do you really believe that is a good idea?" Sherlock asks him now, a low murmur of threat to his voice. Mycroft pretends he does not hear it. He knows Sherlock will never divulge their secret, and not because he is loyal to his brother, but because it would hurt their mother to let the truth be known. Sherlock has only raised his voice to her once, has only let his rebellion be known once, on the day he stormed out with his laptop and his phone and a bag full of old clothes.

If he lets any of his thoughts show, even for a second, in his face or his posture or the position of his limbs, Sherlock will know. They used to make it their game to read each other; they used to practice on each other, wanted to make everyone believe they could read minds. Sherlock was just a kid, then. He talked about being a pirate, about running away; Mycroft had his gaze caught on adulthood, the gun of it trained on him, pointed between his eyes, and he knew more and knew better but didn't want to say, and every time he thought he should be worried he told himself, _he'll grow out of this, he'll grow up_. But he hasn't yet.

"She wants to speak with you," he answers calmly.

"She shouldn't," Sherlock snaps in return. And from this, does Mycroft deduce a feeling of guilt? He can't be sure. He watches and waits, as Sherlock's hands spasm, once, and he allows himself one glance at Mycroft's pocket. He cannot help himself. It's been a while since Mycroft stopped by.

_Life_, Sherlock had told him once, only 48 hours before he slammed the door of the family's house behind him and didn't look back, and Mycroft had not been able to predict that it would happen quite that soon—_life is so __**boring**_.

He must have been blind not to see.

"Sherlock, do you remember the story of the prodigal son?"

Sherlock's eyes narrow, and he gives Mycroft a look to stare one down with. He taps his long, thin, fingers against the tabletop. He isn't trying to remember; he's trying to read, and Mycroft lets him, and he gives him a small, slight smile to help him along.

"You think I'm being wasteful," Sherlock says. "You think I am wasting my mind."

"Yes," he admits. "But that is not all. The son who leaves and returns is valued more than the son who stays."

Sherlock stares at him, the nervous tapping of his fingers stills, and Mycroft returns the gaze, chin tilted back just so, as if he can actually see the flares between his synapses, the quick hot fire of his thoughts.

Sherlock stands abruptly, pushing his chair back with a subdued violence, and he turns his back to Mycroft, one hand in his pocket and the other in his hair. The hand in his hair curls into a fist. He wants a cigarette. He wouldn't hesitate to light one except that he doesn't want Mycroft to know that he wants it. As if Mycroft couldn't read that want in every detail of his posture, in his fingers, his arms, the tilt of his head.

"Life isn't a parable," he says roughly, biting down on the words like a steel trap snapping shut. "I've cut my ties."

He drops his hands to his sides now and flexes his fingers, trying to shake the tremor out of them. Mycroft watches his back, his shoulder blades, the way the thin material of his cheap t-shirt falls, and he remembers when Sherlock was a baby and he himself was barely eight years old, and he used to play peek-a-boo with little brother. My face is hidden from you now. You cannot see me. Where did I go? Sherlock was an unusually serious child, but this game always earned Mycroft a few giggles.

"You haven't cut your ties to me," he points out calmly, after a long moment has passed.

"No, of course not. Never to my _dealer_." He spits out the word like it's a curse, hands on his hips now and head bowed. This is the instant that Mycroft knows he won't take the deal.

He sighs. Takes the bag from his pocket. Drops it on the table without ceremony. Sherlock still hasn't turned around, but his shoulders jerk slightly, a moment's loss of control.

"At least two meals a day, cut back on the smoking, take a walk every day before you suffocate in here, and—"

"And?"

"Try and be nice to the next person you speak to who isn't me."

Sherlock gives a little laugh, at this, though if he's smirking because Mycroft has given in or because he is amused that his brother is directing him to be 'nice,' it is difficult to tell. The laugh goes on longer than it should, just a second or two longer than it should, and then it peters out into a loud, long, tapering sigh. "Deal," Sherlock says. Then he turns and says again, to Mycroft's face this time, "Deal."

Mycroft slides the bag across the table. Sherlock doesn't look at it. He wants to, he's tense again with that wanting, but instead he just fumbles behind him on the kitchen countertop and grabs his crumpled almost-empty packet of cigarettes, and lights up. Mycroft raises an eyebrow at him. "Only two left," Sherlock answers, and tips the packet towards him, so he can see. "Doesn't count."

Mycroft stands up, one smooth and simple movement, and plucks the packet from Sherlock's thin fingers. "You don't understand yet," he says, "that you don't make the rules." He puts the cigarettes in his pocket without looking at them, looking only at Sherlock and that angry, sulky child's expression on his face, even as he exhales a long stream of smoke, and tips the ash from the end of his cigarette off into one of the empty teacups. Maybe Mycroft will throw the pack away in the first trash can he sees, or maybe he'll pretend to forget it's there, and later he'll stand out on his balcony and smoke one down, feeling that heavy rush of nicotine that he thought he'd trained himself to forget. Maybe he'll think about Sherlock, then, how when he was born their mother had said, "You take care of him, Mycroft. You watch out for him. That's your job."

Or maybe he won't.

He imagines that Sherlock will argue with him, on this point of who it is who makes their rules, but he doesn't, so it is up to Mycroft, as he takes the stairs back down to the street, to say it to himself.


End file.
